Click here to edit title.

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.

JohnTaylorGatto - Underground History of American Education

Friends,

If you're hearing increasing discussion of social-emotional learning (SEL) in your students' classrooms, you may be interested in the YouTube video below and a newly released report published by the Pioneer Institute about this highly marketed, but poorly supported addition to the purpose of public education as preparation for "college and career readiness" as defined by education elites.

Questions: Did anyone selling SEL training ask YOU what YOU thought was important for YOUR children to know and be able to do? What YOU want your children to value and what mindset YOU want your YOUR children to have?

Next Question: Who's footing the bill for YOUR children's education?

Last Question: Why is it that MO's assessment scores in reading and math have plateaued or fallen on every metric the State Board of Education uses to monitor education in our state, but schools continue to "stay the course" begun 10 years ago?

Below is from the press release from Pioneer Institute which published the report on SEL.

"Educational software developers purport to have created products that can determine a number of sensitive personality traits through students’ interaction with digital platforms. Much of this monitoring occurs without the consent of children or their parents. Some software — especially for video gaming — goes beyond assessing traits, and aims to encourage the production of students who are well suited for a workforce development-centered education.

“This technology, when coupled with SEL, will further spread the recent wave of amateur, unqualified psychoanalysis in schools,” said Dr. Karen Effrem, M.D., who co-authored the study with Robbins. “Given the uncertainty around diagnosis and treatment of mental or emotional problems, even by highly trained physicians, the SEL movement runs the risk of further increasing the trend toward dangerous over-diagnosis and over-medication of American schoolchildren.”

Social-emotional learning is being interwoven into the Common Core State Standards and school efforts to implement competency-based education (CBE). CBE digitally documents the attainment ofvarious skills with the goal of demonstrating that a student is ready to move on in his or her “personalized learning path.” SEL and CBE are heavily weighted toward a conception of education as focused on workforce development rather than preparing active, informed citizens.

Nationally, in 2018, federal, state, and local governments invested more than $30 billion annually to implement SEL in K-12 public schools. The level of expenditure is surprising considering tight public school budgets and the lack of any reliable, objective, researched-based method to measure or assess a student’s personality, values, and mindsets as SEL proponents admit.

Researcher and standards analyst Robbins and Dr. Effrem, a pediatric medical doctor, call for ending taxpayer-funded implementation and expansion of SEL assessments, standards, and other programs in public schools.

The paper also features a foreword by Dr. Kevin Ryan, founder and director emeritus of the Center for Character and Social Responsibility, formerly known as the Center for Advancement of Ethics and Character, at the Boston University School of Education.

In place of SEL, the co-authors urge educators to refocus on a key lever that led to Massachusetts’ rise to the highest-performing K-12 state in the nation — genuine academic achievement through state and locally developed standards, assessments, and curricula — rather than classroom content of dubious academic value based on pop psychology."

Our schools are moving beyond teaching academic skills and into the realm of training the mind to control behavior. Isn't it time we started asking what the desired final product is supposed to look like before we approve any further product implementation?

DESE attempts to cover up poor management of statewide End Of Course Exams. MCACC exposes their efforts to the Governor

October 28, 2017

Governor Eric Greitens

Missouri State Capitol

Jefferson City, MO 65101

Governor Greitens,

Since Spring 2017, two occasions of withholding
information from the public have occurred under the aegis of the Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). The first was DESE’s withholding of
information regarding its management of unscorable Algebra I EOC responses in
Spring 2017 coupled with the Department’s recommendation to school districts
that they incorporate EOC raw scores into student course grades. The second was
DESE’s administration of Common Core (CC)-aligned EOCs in Algebra I and English
II in Spring 2017 despite a 2016 Questar’s report that new achievement level
cutpoints generated in a recalibration study would negatively affect the
percentage of students scores classified as Proficient+Advanced. Test results
are only meaningful if standardized procedures associated with well-designed
assessments are followed and results authentically generated by students are
used for appropriate purposes. Problems with test quality and administration
yield unreliable results that should not be used or only used with
extreme caution and widely disseminated caveats. Evidence suggests that DESE
personnel did not follow standards of professionalism, but chose to withhold
information from the public.

Enclosed is a report that provides a description
of each event followed by evidence and comments. Evidence and questions pertinent
to the second event are organized as a year-by-year timeline of activities
undertaken by Governor Jay Nixon, the past and current Commissioners of
Education, and past and current members of the State Board of Education
culminating in the withholding of Algebra I and English II EOC annual assessment
data. The purpose of this report is to provide the Governor’s Office with
documentation to support the legitimacy of the public’s concerns about DESE’s
patterns of unprofessional behavior and recommend
a series of remedial actions to protect Missouri’s students and their parents
from the decisions and actions of DESE personnel and the State Board of
Education.

CC-aligned EOCs would not have been
administered in Missouri had DESE complied with language prohibiting
expenditure of appropriated funds on implementation or support of CC included
in every appropriations bill 2013. The people of Missouri have a social compact
with the State that depends on the people’s trust that all agents of
government, including elected officials, appointed board members, and
government employees, comply with all parts of U.S. and Missouri laws. Since
the introduction of CCSS and CC-aligned assessments to Missouri, DESE and the
State Board of Education have violated that trust. It is our hope that as our
current governor, you will remedy the harm done to parents’ authority over
their children’s education, local control of school districts, rights of individual
students, and taxpayers.

The
Hidden Common Core Trap In ESSA

August 14, 2017By Mary Byrne, Ed.D.

In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) promising that the new federal law would return authority over education to the states and parents, and remove the federal government’s role from states’ adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). [1] Then, in the first quarter of 2017, Congress repealed midnight regulations Secretary John King promulgated in an effort to implement as much of the Obama administration’s agenda as possible before the end of his presidency. [2] Echoing the intent of Congress to reduce federal intrusion in education, President Trump signed an Executive Order in April 2017, Enforcing Statutory Prohibitions on Federal Control of Education. [3]

Specific language in Sec. 1111.(j)(1) of the act prohibits the U.S. Secretary of Education from attempting,

. . . to influence, incentivize, or coerce State— ‘‘(1) adoption of the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative [CCSSI] or any other academic standards common to a significant number of States, or assessments tied to such standards; or ‘‘(2) participation in such partnerships. [4]*

President Trump’s Executive Order Section 1 states,

It shall be the policy of the executive branch to protect and preserve State and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools, and school systems, consistent with applicable law, including ESEA, as amended by ESSA, and ESEA’s restrictions related to the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative. [5]

The intent of Congress and President Trump is clear: to assure the American public that the regulations promulgated by the Secretaries of Education in the Obama administration will be reversed, and local control of education restored.

AN UNDERBELLY REQUIREMENT OF THE OMNIBUS BILL/ACT ESSA

In spite of the seeming intent and declaration of the Act, several other sections of ESSA were crafted in such a way as to contradict the intent of Congress to devolve decisions to the states. For example, earlier in the statute, Sec. 1111 (a)(1)(B) mandate states to submit state accountability plans to qualify for Title I grant funds that are “coordinated with other programs under . . . the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act (20 U.S.C. 9621 et seq,). . .

Despite explicit messaging of the intent of ESSA and reinforcement of that intent by President Trump’s Executive Order prohibiting the Secretary of Education from promoting the implementation of CCSS, we observe ESSA’s “underbelly” requirement entrapping states to coordinate their state accountability plans with the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act. This is tantamount to a hidden loophole that will result in states having to retain Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and assessments tied to them in order to receive Title I funds. In other words, Sec. 1111 (a)(1)(B) circumvents prohibitions on the Secretary in Sec. 1111.(j)(1).

THIS UNDERBELLY REQUIREMENT IMPLICITLY ENSURES THAT NAGB RATHER THAN THE PEOPLE OF THE STATES CONTROL EDUCATION BY CONTROLLING THE CONTENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATION PROGRESS

The National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] Authorization Act authorizes federal funding for an independent National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) to oversee the content and design of the NAEP. NAGB acts independently of the U. S. Department of Education (USED) and is presumably not affected by ESSA’s prohibitions and directives as the Secretary of Education.

Yet meeting minutes posted on the NAGB website document NAGB’s Strategic Vision goals and discussions of the board considering alignment of the NAEP with the goals of the CCSSI[6] and international assessments that include surveys of family perceptions and interactions with their child,[7] as well as soft skills and values (e.g., same sex marriage), [8] all of which are outside the scope of objective measures of academic knowledge and skills authorized by law.[9]

Some context information is in order: current NAGB members who are CCSS proponents were appointed by the Secretaries of Education during the Obama administration. They began initial discussions of NAGB’s Strategic Vision (SV) goals in 2014 and formally approved the vision statement in November 2016 as the Obama administration was ending.[10],[11] In addition, contracts for the design and implementation of the NAEP project are given to vendors and researchers who have close ties to the CCSSI inner circle and make recommendations to align the NAEP to the CCSS. [12] The Common Core standards are thus kept in place in the very belly of the independent metric by which we, the American People and taxpayers, should be able to detect how well or poorly those standards, surreptitiously introduced without a vote from Congress, are serving the nation.

The reasons are simple and they combine to push CCSS into the curriculum. Simply put, left unchecked, implementation of the NAGB’s SV will implicitly require states to retain CCSS in order to score well on the NAEP and NAGB will spend federal funding to:

Violate restrictions in NAEP content as specified in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act to academic knowledge and skills;

Violate Congress’s intent when passing ESSA and President Trump’s April 2017 Executive Order by influencing states to maintain CCSSI standards and assessments tied to them to qualify for Title I funds;

Effectively conceal from Congress and the public information about the effects of the CCSSI on the academic performance of America’s students since the implementation of the CCSS and assessments tied to them;

Continue the conflict of interest and cronyism of board members, assessment vendors, and consultants as they work together to expand the infiltration of CCSS in America’s K-12 settings through ESSA’s Title I grant award program; and

Nullify the U.S. Constitution and result in states’ surrender to the centralized bureaucracy of the U.S. federal government or global entities with no accountability to the American people.

In conclusion, the entrapment of states in the ESSA is subtle, nonetheless, it is entrapment –that is, “nudging” state officials to abandon the constitutionally protected sovereignty of the people of their state and, in some cases, unlawfully alter their state’s constitutional definitions of the purpose of publicly supported education in exchange for federal dollars. A similar form of coercion by the Department of Health and Human Services effecting 10% of states’ Medicaid budget was exposed and deemed unconstitutional in National Federation of Independent Businesses v Sebelius.

The strategic secrecy and timing of the release of the final omnibus bill, sponsored by one U.S. Senator (no public record is available to identify who crafted the bill) mocked the legislative process. No public hearings were held before the passage of the bill and legislators were excluded from providing input to the bill throughout its development.[13], [14]Parents and critics are proven right, CCSI is a Trojan horse introduced by elitists through non-governmental organizations yet funded by taxpayers, to promote a national agenda controlled by elitists. It seems that the solution to the crafty requirements of an unconstitutional bureaucracy can only be thwarted when Congress simultaneously (1) investigates the Gates Foundation and partnering non-governmental organization for their roles in CCSI and ESSA and (2) returns USED to the level of a bureau with no enforcement mechanisms on testing and content.

MCACC Comments on Missouri Consolidated State Plan

The Federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in December 2015, requires states to submit a Consolidated State Plan to the Secretary of the US Department of Education detailing how they intend to use federal Title monies. Federal law is very clear that such money is to be used to supplement education spending for the neediest students, not supplant all state funding.

However, DESE's plan details what every single Local Education Agency (school district) will be required to do, regardless of whether they specifically receive Title money. It contains guidelines for assessment of all students and evaluation of all teachers, not just those in districts receiving federal funds.

ESSA requires these plans to undergo public review, as well as review by the Governor.

The state plans to submit its final document by the September 8th deadline.

Public comments on this draft are due by July 15th.

The Coalition submitted comments (below). We encourage parents to read DESE's complete plan (here) and submit their own comments. You may borrow anything from MCACC's comments that you feel is appropriate.

Note that DESE has broken up the comments into individual sections. For your convenience we have broken up MCACC's comments into the DESE designated sections as follows:

HR899 Calls for an end of the U.S. Department of Education

CALL TO ACTIONContact your US Representative and ask them to co-sponsor this bill, or get their commitment to vote for it when it comes up for a vote.

It couldn't be more simple. Congressman Thomas Massie's (R-KY) bill is a single line which reads "The U.S. Department of Education shall terminate December 31, 2018."

During the Secretary Devos confirmation hearings, Massie stated, "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not
be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development.
States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that
meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable.
Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational
opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or
private school."

“For years, I have advocated returning
education policy to where it belongs - the state and local level,” said
Rep. Walter Jones, an original co-sponsor. “D.C. bureaucrats cannot
begin to understand the needs of schools and its students on an
individual basis. It is time that we get the feds out of the classroom,
and terminate the Department of Education.”

The Department of
Education began operating in 1980. On September 24, 1981 in his Address
to the Nation on the Program for Economic Recovery, President Ronald
Reagan said, “As a third step, we propose to dismantle two Cabinet
Departments, Energy and Education. Both Secretaries are wholly in accord
with this. Some of the activities in both of these departments will, of
course, be continued either independently or in other areas of
government. There's only one way to shrink the size and cost of big
government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and
are getting in the way of a solution... [E]ducation is the principal responsibility of local school
systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments. By
eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was
created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs
and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the
education of our children.”

It's all about the data.

The planned workforce is still the goal of the progressive government and now they are free to admit it. They are in the process of collecting data on every single American starting with our children in public schools.

Check out Dr. Byrne's latest Powerpoint on the data collection efforts of the Federal and State governments here.(If you want to see the embedded movies you will need to download the file from the page that pops up. When you see the message about scanning for virus, click Yes.)

WATCHCommon Core is the GLUE that makes data collection possible

Why data tracking of students is still important and what parents need to know about how much the system knows or wants to know about your child.

Please visit our Data page for details on who is collecting what, why and how.

Race To The Top 2.0

“This Act prohibits the Federal Government from funding the
development, pilot testing, field testing, implementation,
administration, or distribution of any federally sponsored national test
in reading, mathematics, or any other subject, unless specifically and
explicitly authorized by law… It is the sense of the Congress that
States and local education agencies retain the rights and
responsibilities of determining educational curriculum, programs of
instruction, and assessments for elementary and secondary education.”
— ESSA SEC. 8549A and SEC. 8549B

Throughout the U.S. Department of Education’s Innovative Assessment
Demonstration Authority proposed regulations we see a pattern extremely
similar to that of the 2009 Race To The Top grant, which bribed States
into applying for a grant that would require the implementation of
one-size-fits-all standards to receive funding. The Department of
Education is using these regulations to push a common, national
assessment system.

Moreover, the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority proposed
regulations incentivize States to join a consortium, something Congress
and ESSA proponents said would not happen.

The following are specific areas in which the proposed regulations are
egregious in their attempts to impose a common, Federal education
system, stripping parents and SEAs of what little local control of
education remains, and in many ways contradicts and undermines the law
in which they are intended to provide guidance...

See the specific violations of the language and intent of ESSA at StopFedEd

The
Patience, Privacy, Power, Politics, and Pensions Behind the Every Student Succeeds Act

Senator Lamar Alexander made passage of ESSA his top priority since the
2014 mid-terms. This was to be is legacy to the American people. Find
out what really went on in DC to get this Act, which Secretary Duncan
crowed contained every policy the Administration has been advocating for
for years, passed. We were told it was going to return control of
education to the states. However, Alexander has admitted that, "ESSA isn't worth the paper it's printed on unless it's
implemented right, .... The federal government will take these powers right
back." Read Dr. Byrne's whole paper here. [Updated]

New Report Sheds Light on Deficiencies of Common Core’s Math Standards

(Washington, D.C.) – The American Principles Project Foundation has just published a new report, “Common Does Not Equal Excellent.” Focusing on the K-8 Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M), authors Erin Tuttle and J.R. Wilson provide evidence that the CCSS-M’s dictation of an instructional approach blurs the line between standards and curriculum. The standards consequently undermine the professional judgment of teachers, whose task it is to know the varied learning needs and styles of their students. Tuttle and Wilson consequently refute the claim that the Common Core is benign, or “just a set of standards.”

Project Veritas Videos Prove Us Right - For Ed Suppliers it IS All About the Money

Project Veritas has released a series of
powerful and troubling videos showing the callous attitudes and base
fiscal focus of the education publishing companies when it comes to providing
educational support materials for students. It was never a secret that they are in business to make money and changing standards feeds that business model, but the open contempt for the children and academic excellence is startling in this series of videos.

Joy Pullman has a three part series over at The Federalist providing details of the decline in quality of American textbooks, the corruption that exists in a system designed to grant monopolies to certain companies by placing inordinate textbook selection power in the hands of a few corruptible people.

Why should we be concerned about this decline? In Terrance Moore's book, The Story Killers he warns about the low quality research and bias in these books and what it will do to the mindset of future generations.

“Essentially, all of World War II has been reduced to dropping the bomb
and consequently, we are led to believe, America’s inhumanity…Do we want
the children just now entering school and in the years to come—who may
have never met their great-grandparents—to be made ashamed of that
Greatest Generation, of America, and of our resolution to remain free?”

The next time your school district is looking to update their curriculum and textbook selection, maybe you should have a special screening of these videos for your school board members.

"And slapping a new name on it, which in my case, I hope they do…Let’s do
it…I can sell a s&*t ton of training around whatever you’re calling
it.” - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Account Exec. talking about rebranding Common Core.

"Republicans and conservatives do not like being told what to do by people they disagree with....They want to influence what is being taught and Common Core doesn't put up with that." - former Pearson Executive

Governor Nixon Signs HB1490

The Missouri Coalition Against Common Core is proud to announce that Governor Jay Nixon signed House Bill1490 into law on July 14, 2014. We appreciate the work of the Missouri Legislature and the Governor in this first step which enables Missourians to direct and develop education for Missouri students. We believe this is an important first step forward that applies the appropriate caution when implementing a new and untried standards system. This new law will provide a measure of protection for our teachers, districts and students from consequences for student test scores on a standardized test whose validity and reliability as a tool for measuring their performance is not supported by data.

We look forward to working with the Governor and the Legislature in the next session to further education excellence for Missouri students.

There you can find Work Group member lists, meeting locations, dates and times, as well as dates and locations for the public hearings that the State Board of Education is required to hold.

You can also find links to videos from the initial meetings of the work groups on DESE's youtube page here.

Universal Preschool Tied To Common Core

Read more about the universal FAIL of preschool to produce lasting improvement of student performance. Studies now showing that making preschoolers sit in a class structured for older students is actually harmful to their psycho-social development. See our newEarly Childhood Education Tab

Common Core Part of an Old Plan

Linda Murphy is an Oklahoma educator
and former appointed Secretary of Education and Deputy Commissioner of Labor
for Workforce Education and Training. She wrote in
the Okie Blaze about her experience in 1995 she was sent to the National Governors Association meeting in Chicago, by then
Oklahoma Governor Keating, where the NGA staff and Marc Tucker met with
Education Advisors from many states.

At that meeting they discussed President Clinton's education plans which were
being promoted by business leaders like Lou Gerstner former IBM CEO who later
went on to become Chairman Emirtus of Achieve Inc. which wrote the Common Core
Standards.

Now her state supports Common Core and the vision of a “human
capital pipeline” through education and training nationwide that it enables.

"This is all too familiar to those of us who became informed in the
1990’s," she wrote. "Some leaders remain: Gerstner, Cohen and long range master
planner, Marc Tucker. Since 1988 Tucker has been Executive Director of
the National Center for Education and the Economy, NCEE, funded by the Carnegie
Foundation.

Michael Cohen,
Executive Director of ACHIEVE, was chosen by Clinton for leadership in the
Department of Education. Cohen was on staff with Clinton, while he was
Governor and chairman of the National Governor’s Association."

At that time
Murphy and the education advisors from Virginia and New Hampshire were very
vocal about their opposition to this vision.

"I just
said NO. No, the state of Oklahoma will NOT be participating in this
plan," she said.

Teachers
trained as facilitators of aligned curriculum loosing freedom to teach by
direct instruction and design their own lesson plans

Teachers
evaluated by monitors who report to the State Longitudinal Data System
-SLDS for “Quality and Accountability”

School
Districts’ grades reported to the SLDS and the public based on “over
simplified” and unproven processes

Student
data collected and stored in State Longitudinal Data Systems -SLDS for use
across government agencies or outside parties developing tests and curriculum;
P-20 Councils oversee student tracking from Preschool through Age
20; Individual and group data from schools, government agencies and
workforce organizations matched and used in planning; Grades, behavior,
nicknames, extracurricular activity, address and religious identity
designated as useful data

It is now 2015, two decades since this plan was launched. Back in the 90's
there was no social media and no grassroots activism of any serious note. The
creators did not envision any public back lash and they had the support of
business giants like IBM. They actually expected the public to lap it up. The
government was going to make our kids college and career ready. What's not to
like? They certainly didn't anticipate any kind of coordinated public push
back. Their blind spot was their inability to predict the public's rejection of
any plan that was based on authoritarian central control. They didn't plan on
the tiger moms, the constitutional resurgency and frankly the high level of
awareness of so many parents about what goes on in school. Turns out there is
plenty not to like.

Bill Gates telling the Natl Council of State Legislatures that the big benefit of common core is creating a uniform customer base for businesses.

Paul Schwartz warning about the dangers of student data collection.

Please check it out and share it with your friends!

Had enough of public school yet?

Check out our Homeschooling page for information about your rights to homeschool and links to Missouri resources for parents just like you.

Contact Us:Anne Gassel636-448-2124

Gretchen Logue314-378-6568

nomocommoncore@gmail.com

MCACC Brochure

We've updated our brochure! Please print out the new one and share. Find it here, or go to our resources page to find it along with other supporting documents. Print it out back to back. Stack the pages and fold in half.

MCACC Tip Line

Do you have an experience with CC in your child's school that you want to share? A crazy assignment? Teacher opposition suppressed? Unhappy or newly struggling student? Bullying Superintendent? These stories have real impact with legislators and let other parents know that their experience is not unique. We will share only with your permission.You may also use this form to request a speaker at your event.

For more details on other pending legislation to drop Common Core standards click Here.

Why We Need To Stop Common Core- Video

The American Principles Project and Concerned Women of America have produced a fabulous video series that describes what Common Core Standards are, how we got them and what we can do to get them out of our state.

Please watch all five segments and share this link with as many people as you can.

If you really want to educate yourself about Common Core go to our Resource page and read the Pioneer Institute Report "Controlling Education From The Top"